Import Existing Documents

When first moving to Author-it, many people have existing documentation created in another tool. These documents can be migrated to Author-it using the Author-it Importer. In our Acme scenario, we have an X5000 User Guide we want to bring into the Author-it Library and update to create a new manual.

When a document is imported, a number of new Author-it objects are created. How and where these objects are created, is defined by an Import Profile. The Acme profiles create these objects in a new folder under the folder that is currently selected.

To Import an Existing Document:

1. Select the Technical Publications folder.
2. Select the Import tab and choose Print > Word.

   The Select the file to Import window opens.

   

3. Navigate to your Author-it 5\Data\Tutorial folder, select the X5000 User Guide.doc, and choose Open. The Author-it Import Wizard appears to guide you through the import process.
4. The Topic Structure Wizard analyzes the document and decides where the document will be broken up into topics based on the paragraph styles applied to the contained text. While a number of styles have been found in this document, only the styles Heading 1, Heading 2 and Heading 3 should create new topics using either the Chapter or Topic template The other paragraph styles, while detected and listed, are for the topic content. We'll deal with those in a moment.

   

5. Nothing needs to be changed, so choose Next to continue.

   The Style Mapping Wizard looks at the styles in the document being imported, and maps them to the Author-it styles that exist in your Library.

6. We can see that the Heading Procedure style is going to map to Body Text which is not quite the result we want. To change this, select the Body Text style and choose the button.

   

7. The Select a Style Object window opens.

   

8. Select the Procedure Heading style from the Standards > Styles > Headings folder, then choose OK. The new mapping for that Style is displayed, and (new rule) displays on the right. This action creates a temporary rule (new rule) which can be saved in the profile at the end of the import.

   Repeat these steps to map Table Body Text to Table Text.

   

9. Choose Next to continue.

   The Import Preview displays showing a preview of how the document will be imported.

   
   When content is being imported, it is often necessary to rearrange the order it occurs in and the outline levels. The up and down arrows change the order of the content. The promote and demote (left and right) arrows change the outline level.

   

10. Nothing needs to be changed, so choose Next to continue. The document is imported.

    

11. Ensure the Open Imported Book option is checked, and choose Close to exit the wizard.

    Our newly created Book is displayed:

    

12. Select to close the Book.

A new X5000 User Guide folder has also been created and the objects that have been created during the Import are placed in this folder.